How To Make A Pina Colada Smoothie

One of the first “grown up” drinks I had when I was a kid was a virgin pina colada when I visited Disney world. I simply loved these two fruits individually as it is, pineapple and coconut. But together, oh baby, they make such sweet music! Now I am not really a drinker, so I like to make this pina colada smoothie recipe from time to time to wet my tropical palette.

Now there are a number of different ways to make this smoothie and everyone will generally have different tastes as these flavors are rather distinct and strong. Also keep in mind that this is a smoothie, and not an actual pina colada so it’s not going to taste exactly like the famous beach beverage in texture and taste, but I have tried my best to evoke the two most important flavors, the coconut and pineapple, so this recipe emphasizes those two fruits in there more natural state. But the real challenge is, how to make a pina colada smoothie that actually tastes similar enough to the real drink!

Pina Colada Smoothie!

Use Fresh AND Frozen Pineapple in Your Smoothie, This is Key!

A lot of folks end up using bananas to thicken this type of smoothie up, and while I love that fruit, I find that it often overpowers the pineapple and coconut flavors, so with this recipe I have opted to not use it as a thickening ingredient. (you can if you want to however, especially if you love bananas!) I like to use a healthy amount of both fresh and frozen pineapple chunks, why?

Because the frozen chunks make the smoothie thicker, but prevent it from being diluted in flavor which will happen if you load up on too much ice. But I also use fresh pineapple chunks too because they tend to be naturally sweeter then there frozen buddies. However, if you cannot buy fresh pineapple for whatever reason, you can use all frozen chunks and just sweeten the drink a bit more, to your personal taste of course. Check out my how to make a pineapple smoothie guide for a non pina colada flavored smoothie recipe.

Alrighty, now that we have gotten all that out of the way, let’s get to it!

Notes : You can blend the smoothie without the Stevia to see if the drink is sweet enough for your particular taste first, then add in the Stevia and blend it in for a bit if you feel it needs more sweetening. The Greek version of the So Delicious coconut yogurt is a newer product, so if you can only find the normal variety of plain coconut yogurt, that should suffice, the Greek variety tends to just thicken things up a bit more. If you have a smaller blender, just cut the frozen and fresh pineapple servings in half. Also, you can just blend the soft ingredients first, and then throw in the frozen chunks afterwords if you blender is not up for doing it all together in one shot.